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Trying not to sound like I am dissatisfied. I love this piano, as I have said many times on this forum. However, leaving off parts, glue that doesn't hold, using non-shielded wires; should not be inevitable. Maybe it is for the piano industry? I actually expected the first tranche manufactured to receive extraordinary attention to insure that the initial reviews of the product were stellar.

jnx, on my NV10 there is no audible background noise in the headphones. Tried Sennheiser HD650, Teufel Aureol Real and some cheap earbuds.

I do hear noise when the touch-screen is being updated or touched (this seems to be a separate problem with my NV10) but nothing else.

However some noticeable constant hiss comes from all speakers. This is actually similar to the CA93 here: speakers hissing and silent headphones.

Had they spent more time before launching this model...
You can't accept this blunders in your top-of-the-line instrument.
Missing felts, bad wires and hissing speakers, a not so great sound system (when you are selling a joint venture with Onkyo), problems with an android device. Since 8777€ up to 9799€.

Noooo, thanks. That's not a matter of 'first batch'.
It's something deeper, I'm afraid, as it happens again and again.

There's no question in my mind that Kawai has a higher rate of problems with its products than its competitors. No manufacturer is exempt from issues but over time it has been clear that the rate of issues is significantly higher with Kawai. They make up for it with great service when issues are reported, but I do think it's something they should look into. People deserve better than what they are getting - you shouldn't have to go through the stress of warranty claims or DIY repairs just to get what you paid for. Kawai makes very nice and innovative products, but If I was going to live on a desert island I wouldn't take take a Kawai - even if it was my favourite. I'd probably take a boring Yamaha - you rarely hear about failures with them. Roland is pretty solid too - aside from the disintegrating keytops problem of 5 years ago.

Who knows, even if the early ones had shipped with a few issues we'd be unlikely to know about it. The only reason we're discussing it here is because we've got a handful of Novus owners talking in one thread, a number of which have willingly dismantled and poked about inside! I'm going out on a limb here but I'd guess there wasn't an equivalent thread for the AGs. Without that communication the hypothetical AG owner with a fault would have just poked the shop under warranty, got a tech sent out and probably thought nothing more of it.

+1

I don’t understand why some here still deny this fact.

This has nothing to do with the fact that this is a Novus thread. There was a long-running thread for the new Rolands, and issues like these were not as prominent. Same goes for other brands, including Yamaha.

I once owned an MP10, and it took two trips to a tech and one trip to the dealer (new unit) to finally get a working instrument. On the other side, I’ve owned several Yamahas, including a Clavinova CLP380, and never did I experience any issues. The CLP was kept in a basement, and sometimes I would go for days without playing it. That’s not a big deal; however, the heater was always off during that time. When I came to the piano, the keys were almost frozen. I honestly felt that this piano would break down at some point, but I had it for two years and never a single sqeak.

I still loved my MP10, but after what I experienced and all the posts I’ve read here, I honestly believe it’s time that Kawai addresses the underlying issues. Is it quality control? Poor craftsmanship? Low quality materials? Or perhaps all of the above? That’s for Kawai to figure out and correct.

I don't know what is it, exactly, but is quite surprising because it's NOT how this brand delivers other items, as equally (or lower) priced uprights i.e. wich are usually perfect.

Magraman, that is also my experience. I did not have a single problem with my previous four Kawai's. Any number of these "issues" could be the result of transportation and delivery. The NV10 is a marvelous instrument once these little irritations are solved. I still recommend it to anyone interested in a grand piano experience. And that experience should include a visit from a tech to check the action, damper system, wires to speakers, etc.(IMHO)

I have to say I'm not convinced this is the case. It seems a lot more people discuss Kawai here, and a lot more people tend to dig into the details of their Kawai's (maybe the type of customer they attract with their 101 action variants ) which of course raises more opportunities to find issues.

I remember when the rd-2000 was released, several of the first purchasers here reported numerous issues (firmware update issues, auto-off not functioning correctly, excessive play in the keyboard/action, clicking keys, incorrect led indicators etc.). And several of these resulted in returns or exchanges. There was at that time a big rd2k thead or two with people trying to replicate or diagnose problems.

On the flipside, in the many months since Yamaha's GrandTouch action has been released (and several confirmed 675/685 owners) not a single person has tmi opened one up and posted pictures or measurements from the action. There hasn't been a big owners/hands on thread. Of course that doesn't mean there are or aren't problems but it does suggest a lower level of engagement (at least non-playing engagement) among owners here who discuss such issues. They're not the ones measuring noise floors against pro audio equipment, recording speaker hiss or noticing missing leather pads on internal mechanisms, and posting about it here.

We are spoiled with a lot of good choices these days.

It's still important to note that NU1 and NU1X 's sudden loud note problem is something that's been specifically (under)designed to behave like that. There's no fix, especially one that can be performed by the end user. In order to fix it, Yamaha will need to redesign the piano (probably from ground-up since it requires optical sensors on the hammers but those are upright hammers and to this date Yamaha don't have an implementation of upright hammer sensors).

And then we compare it to first batch quality problems that are fixable even by the user.

Night and day

Good point!

Does this imply that the action can't be worked on by any qualified acoustic piano technician, as they would be accustomed to sliding out the action with minimal disassembly? Probably more of a post-warranty concern but still of interest.

Oh, I don't want to give that impression. I have NO idea, really, other than the common sense observation that it will likely be a different process than accessing the action on an acoustic. IIRC, Dave Horne has an N3X which has had action work done, and he mentioned it was quite an involved process on that hybrid as well.

I'll just make it clear here that Pianoworld is not my only source of data. I work for a music school that is mostly piano students. We also supply musical gear to our students. We have seen a significant number of complaints regarding Kawai's domestic home pianos (we don't have access to stage pianos). Practically none from Yamaha. A few from Casio. We don't deal with Roland so my impressions of them are just from friends and colleagues who own them and from here. With warranties, we practically have Kawai's rep on speed-dial. Yamaha's rep, we rarely call. My private students that I teach from home also reflect what I've seen elsewhere. This might not be a significant enough data set for some of you, but at some point we make opinions and this is my opinion. I think it's mostly Kawai owners who defend them or cite biases because they don't want it to be true. I'm not saying Kawai is making junk - I think they are basically ok but tend to have small problems that are fixable rather than fatal and expensive component breakdown. I just think they should invest a bit more time in dotting some i's and crossing some t's.

Are your observations limited to DP's? Or home acoustics also?

Only DPs. For acoustics we refer them to a piano store.

A question for other owners on a features I haven't quite figured out: when do "Sound Settings" and "Settings" get saved?

Normally, I have local control off. Saving that to a favorite works as expected, so I have one favorite with LC on, and one with LC off to make one touch switching between VST and internal sounds.

But how are LC and other Settings saved for the standard Pianst Mode menu? I somehow got it to stick at LC Off without using a favorite, but can't get it to stay back on through a reboot. Sometimes going into VT and "Store to sound" seems to work, but other times it will rest to LC off when I next start up and go to pianist mode.

I think that school environment is a pretty good sample to support your comments.

First of all, I'm (pleasantly) surprised that it is even possible to save the local control setting in a favorite, as the manual does not list this option among those that can be stored in a favorite. Luckily, that seems to be an inaccuracy in the manual (maybe it was changed in a firmware update?).

About your question: That's a complicated topic, and that's where much of the criticism about the new UI stems from.

As I understand the manual, the "Store to Sound" option (which is located inside the VT menu) stores only the VT settings.

All the other settings, including the ones in the "Sound Settings" and "Settings" menus (but also the selected pianist mode + resonance depth, or sound mode voice, or ambience/reverb) fall in one of the following categories:

• Stored automatically. These settings are the simplest ones. Just select the desired value, leave the menu, and forget about it. The selected value will be retained even after a restart. The "auto display off" and "auto power off" options in the "Settings" menus are such settings.
• Not stored at all, not even in a favorite. These settings are the most inconvenient ones. You can select a new value, but once you restart the piano, the setting reverts to its default and not even storing it in a favorite works. This means that such a setting always needs to be set "freshly" after you restart the piano. The "Bluetooth Audio" option is such a setting. It always defaults to "On" after a restart, and is also not stored to a favorite.
• Stored only in a favorite. These are the settings where you can store a change, but only in a favorite. Such a setting reverts to its default value after a piano restart, but the value that was stored to a favorite can be recalled. However the value from the favorite only applies while you are on the favorite screen and have that favorite selected (except for the "startup with favorite" option, see below for more). As far as I can tell, only settings from the "Sound Settings" and "Settings" menus are in this category (but not all of them, some are in the categories above!). For example the "Tone Control" setting in the "Sound Settings" menu is one of these. If the piano is restarted, it always reverts to its default (which is normally "Off", but see below for more). But if you have stored a favorite with a different settings, then this different setting is used while the favorite is selected.

As I mentioned in the last bullet above, there's also the "Startup with Favorite" option.

This option has two purposes, if it is enabled:

First, its most obvious purpose is to auto-select the first favorite upon startup. So after a startup, the piano automatically has the first favorite applied, so all the virtual technician settings, pianist mode settings and whatnot that are stored in that favorite are automatically applied. This means that also the settings from the "Sound Settings" and "Settings" menu that fall into the third bullet point above and that are stored in this favorite are now applied. So far so boring - this alone only has the advantage that it saves you two taps on the screen, that you otherwise would have to make manually to select the first favorite after a piano restart.

What's interesting is the second purpose of the "Startup with Favorite" option that I found out (there's no mention of it in the manual, so I hope this is not a fluke that goes away with a firmware update):

Remember how I wrote in the third bullet above, that options of this type revert back to their default values after a restart (unless a favorite is selected)? Well, the question is, what is this default value that these options revert to?

Well, if the "Startup with Favorite" option is not enabled, then this default is system defined. For example for "Tone Control", the system default is "Off". Or for "Phones Type", the system default is "Normal", etc.

But with "Startup with Favorite" enabled, the default for such a setting is no longer the system default, but is the value that is stored in the first favorite (the one that is auto-selected during startup). Which has the effect that these values from the first favorite also still apply if you leave the favorite screen (after the piano restart and the first-favorite-auto-select).

Let me give you a specific example using "Phones Type": Let's say I have two favorites, one with "Phones Type: Open" (that's the first favorite) and a second with "Phones Type: Closed". With these two favorites in the system, the behavior is as follows (after a piano restart):

If "Startup with Favorite" is off:
While you are on the favorites screen with the first favorite selected, the "Phones Type: Open" applies.
While you are on the favorites screen with the second favorite selected, the "Phones Type: Closed" applies.
While you are not on the favorites screen, i.e. anywhere else in the UI, the system default "Phones Type: Normal" applies.

If "Startup with Favorite" is on:
While you are on the favorites screen with the first favorite selected, the "Phones Type: Open" applies.
While you are on the favorites screen with the second favorite selected, the "Phones Type: Closed" applies.
While you are not on the favorites screen, i.e. anywhere else in the UI, the setting from the first favorite still applies, i.e. "Phones Type: Open" in this case. <-- here is the difference to the "Startup with Favorite Off" case.

So the "Startup with Favorite" option, together with the first favorite, can be used to override the system defaults for some settings in the "Sound Settings" and "Settings" menus, so that you get these "new" defaults after a piano restart, and those defaults apply as soon you leave the favorites screen (until you override the value manually in the menu).

But there is one big caveat that I found: The first favorite (together with the "Startup with Favorite" option) only reliably defines these "new" defaults, if this first favorite is created as the very first one after a factory reset, and is then never again modified or moved around. If you change the ordering of the favorites and make another favorite the new first one, then for all that I could tell, the result regarding the defaults is not predictable. Based on the above, one would expect that the values from the favorite that was newly moved into first position are now the new defaults. But that doesn't seem to be the case. It's also not so that the same defaults as before are still applied. Instead, you somehow get a weird mix of defaults. It doesn't even help to erase all favorites and then create a fresh "first" favorite. Again you get unpredictable behavior. (BTW, I don't think that this behavior is "by design", but is most likely a bug that you have to workaround.)

The only way how I could get the first favorite to reliably define my own "new" defaults was, if I created this first favorite as the very first one after a factory reset, and then never moved it around, i.e. always left it in first place. So to make use of this, do something like this:

• Think long and well about what defaults you want. Maybe try out some things and experiment a bit.
• Do a factory reset.
• Set all these defaults that you want in the "Sound Settings" and "Settings" menus.
• Also set other settings that you want in the startup favorite (maybe a different pianist mode or sound mode voice?).
• Save this as your first favorite.
• Enable the "Startup with Favorites" option.
• Never again touch this first favorite (well, at least until a firmware upgrade fixes this problem).

You can now create more favorites and use them normally, even move them around among themselves, but you should never move one of these other favorites into first place, or you will break your work of above and will have to start over with another factory reset. (Well, at least that's what I found how it works...)

Hope this helps a bit! As I said - it's a complicated topic!